The ticker tape of replays those things you wish to reminisceThose creatures of culture remain on auto-replay you have no choicebut to watch

FACT: we have zero agency

FACT: whiteness is a super-pac

FACT: yes as a feminist i’ll still choose migos

Toxic masculinity lends itself to a particular brand of contempt one that tastes strangein my mouth as it is a borrowed petal a tangy peel not tangible

there is no belonging it is thorny

I want some

maybe it will help me become ascendantthat pathetic reach toward cosmic that we dream ofwhen we find ourselves knee-deep in the sunken place

and the spoon keeps spinning

the worst set ever played for an audience of 7.6 billion

Here are the rules:

I stay open

I keep cavities tight and candied(those things that throb and never rot)

When I fuck like kimye it’s toward an enthusiastic invisibility

Word on the street is that you can get a break as a ghost

Am I your man / Can we dissolve together

Is the rectum a graveor
I’m pretty sure it’s that money shot where I can get my groove back like stella

Maybe vapor is the real freedomthat wild thing that doesn’t need biometricsthat assassin that can pass through the pulp of borders without a passport

If vapor is a type of freedom is vaping then a political act?

Someone once described to me the ‘act of vaping’ as a ‘joke on humanity’ :wobbly bodies walking around giving head to alien prostheticswhile real aliens watch us from mars in their north face jackets jacking off

Here’s a hypothetical:

We are all assholes

It’s cold out there

Can I be your girl tonight

I asked you to keep me warm in this war but offered you nothing in returnSince heat can only travel out we both died/ My bad

Still we sing and sufferYou keep calling to ask me what I’m doing but then blame it on butt-dial

I text thefting words from ‘lil kim: “Laying in the cut like a bandage. Come thru!”

You don’t get it / You don’t believe me / You don’t accept my invitation / How isit possible your ass still knows my number by heart / How is it possible that youstill use read-receipts

Take a hike / It doesn’t take florence nightingale to identify the wound here

We go all night like disco to block the blood hoping the hurt will coagulate

Alone on this mountaintopwith my hand on your mouthand fingers pinching your nose I still can’t tell if there’s injury

See, this is where we can’t keep going just as it used to be

No, in five years when we look back on this collapse I won’t wish you were hereNo, in five dog years when we are done digging I won’t excavate youNo, in five light years when we return to this planet I won’t expect itto still to be habitable

The depth of trauma and how close it cuts to the bone shouldn’t be the evidencewe need of how loved we were / yet we want itthat absence as a weaponit is a chalk outline

Here are the forensics:

There’s a science to drake, I swear it

Those nights where we threw our hands up after too many glasses of winehotlined a pathway to headache with a riri imaginary at our fingertipsjust out of reach

That sexy-ass solstice we spent on our plutoyears after the real thing was demoted to a dwarf poor thing

all the other planets laughed / how sizeistthat was our post-mortem

The modernity of love is an eclipse /pretty weird to navigate but with special stripes in hi-vis

To be planetary is aspirational anyway !don’t be naive, everyone knows the canon is a cannon

The romance of aesthetics is bigoteddon’t forget that beauty is the native tongue of this capitalist conspiracykeep your eyes on the roadyou don’t get to climb out of the car whenever you please

The wedding-industrial complex began with chivalry and so did the construct ofromantic love

Neither were sprung for bodies like ours both vapid in the blender of fairytale

There’s no victory within victorianism

the queen couldn’t care less about what position you take in bed nor in politic

don’t expect she’ll find forgiveness now for her swans that we atewhile starved for one anotherjust because now meghan markle’s on the sceneThat’s not socialist

There have been so many shadowy hours

Those days where the penny-wish is that the bottom of the bathtub drops away and swallows me
whole along with my arnica

Heartbreak is neoliberal so is apathy it is saleable by hallmarkon bad days I literally don’t care enough to die I’m too mindful

On Instagram sliding up into my DMs is that friend of mine whoburning, never sleeps on the world
That restless one whoin the pale watery hours of a new year dawningalongside an excellence of emojisfit for egyptian royals of an early dynasticwonders whether erica garner’s heart was ‘just too full’

Girl, I feel you Hey, I feel it

Hey, post-script : there is a danger in #blackgirlmagicthat thing that parades and celebrates /that thing that suggests our trying for superhuman

is magic allowed to hurt?

activism is not alchemy it is a mantra

sometimes humanity is all we have left though but it is slippery / it excludes

there ain’t nothing super about it

Here are those resolutions:

They will come for you / They will never take you

(erica, we lost a daddy, too)

In state-sanctioned love, I promise to failAnd in this new condition broken now to never seek safety

I’m sorry I’m not sorry

My problem is that I’ve been too much of an empathall the universe rushes through meyet somehow I am blamed for being devoid of compassion

I don’t want to live your life right this life I liveI make it now

(In these hearts all things are kept)
(In these rooms all things must be saved)

Here’s the edict:

The body is a burning building

We take what we can and don’t look back

Don’t believe what they say we’ll see to it that it fails and falters

we’ll rebuild without blueprints so it fits just right without the speculative seize of a
patriarchal architect

Legacy Russell is a writer, artist, and cultural producer. Born and raised in New York City’s East Village she is the UK Gallery Relations Lead for the online platform Artsy. Her work can be found in a variety of publications worldwide: BOMB, The White Review, Rhizome, DIS, The Society Pages, Guernica, Berfrois and beyond. Holding an MRes of Visual Culture with Distinction at Goldsmiths College of University of London, her academic and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, idolatry, and new media ritual. Her first book Glitch Feminism is forthcoming from Verso. Twitter: @legacyrussell | Instagram @ellerustle. www.legacyrussell.com.

It’s easiest to start from the impulse to problematize the position of the flâneur. The ugly word privilege hovers around it, and we turn to questions that we know the answer to, “Who, exactly, is allowed to wander, like so?”

That Diana and the Amazons speak ‘hundreds’ of languages is believable, given their situation and seeming enlightenment; that English becomes their go-to choice for daily chats off the Greek coast, less so.

On the ancient river, seagull rock crests out of the waters. An outcrop within its sight is thorned by a few young silhouettes, taking turns plunging into the river some feet below. Riverboats and water taxis, white river cruise-ships weave short and cyclical tours between the two shores.